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Archive for August, 2025

Because My Heart Is Where You Now Dwell Cinepoem

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

What if we could make a room inside our hearts where our beloveds who are no longer physically present could live? What would you put there? What scent would be in it? What tastes? What textures? The title of this poem was inspired by Leigh Gage. “Because My Heart Is Where You Now Dwell” is the eleventh track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible.

The amazing music is by Steve Law. The amazing video is by Holiday Mathis. My gosh, these two are incredible collaborators! Please, watch the video (above) and share it. We made this for you! 
To purchase RISKING LOVE, visit here.
To listen, visit Spotify: here; Deezer: here; Pandora: here; Apple Music: here; YouTube Music: here

Video and Audio Releases from RISKING LOVE to Date
Safety Net ; The Precious Matter of Love ; I Want an Interlude with Mr. Clean ; Into the Questions ; For the One Who Is Gone : In Case You Don’t Know Already ; The Long Marriage ; The Broken Heart Goes Dancing ; Still Here ; Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork ; Because My Heart Is Where You Now Dwell

*Do you know anyone who votes for the Grammys? Steve and I are submitting our album for consideration … and if you know someone who might be interested in the Spoken Word Poetry category, perhaps you could encourage them to consider watching one of our videos to get a feel for RISKING LOVE.

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I Thought This Was a Poem about a Lemon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 21, 2025| 2 Comments »




In the bowl, an old
lemon, shriveled
and hard-skinned,
Still, when I slice it,
the desiccated lemon
gives whatever brightness
it has left to the glass
of water. Oh dried-up
yellow teacher,
thank you for reminding
this dried-up version of me
to value what gifts
I have been given,
to love the world
enough to give
the gifts back.

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Fräulein

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2025| 4 Comments »

Just because it’s a song about a man leaving a woman
and realizing he still loves her doesn’t mean

it isn’t also a song about a mother and a daughter
singing their hearts out in a car, both of us

falling in love with what the human voice can do
and what a song can do when two people choose

to sing it together, over and over, until it becomes
our anthem, until it becomes the glue in something

larger than we are, something less about the words
and more about the transmission of love,

the shared moments in which we come together
to sing it, you on the melody with Tyler Childers,

me on the harmony with Colter Wall. And the more
we sing it, the more I’m in love not just with the song,

but with you, because no matter what the song is about,
it’s our song, and we choose to sing it again and again,

because joy, because the way two voices come together
as one, even out of tune, because, Fräulein, this song is ours.

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Ongoing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 20, 2025| 1 Comment »


 
 
I don’t know how, after your son has died,
you go on, she said, and I don’t know either,
but this morning, I walked through the field
 
where he used to drive the Gator, pulling his
friends behind him in an old red canoe, all
of them howling their laughter, shrieking their joy,
 
and I stood in that empty field and wept, my heart
in halves, and a scrap of old joy slipped through
the crack, and I laughed, tears streaming, I laughed.

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Creatures, All

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 18, 2025| 6 Comments »

I love the small sounds of pleasure
people make when taking the first
sip of coffee, or when sitting at last 
after standing for hours. That soft 
hum of delight that escapes the lips
when someone presses a thumb
into the arch of our foot and makes
small circles on the sole. That sigh
that flies out when we step into shade
on a relentlessly sunny day. Bless these 
moments when the mind can’t outbrain 
the small animal living inside us, when
our untamed self slips through the cage 
of decorum and groans or purrs 
or moans or gasps and reminds us 
beneath all our fancy syntax and
pretty words, we’re creatures,
and the body is so much more
than a carrier for intellect.
Every delighted roar and ecstatic howl
is a common language, a reminder
we are all native here on this earth,
all fluent in grateful whimper
and satisfied grunt, all of us eloquent
when we praise in our primitive tongue.
 

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In a Circle of Mountains

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 17, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
In a circle of mountains
it’s easier to remember
we belong to the mountains,
belong to high-pitched cheep
of pica, belong to the cliffs,
to the path, to the unpath,
belong to the blue,
blue reach of sky.
 
We belong as much to each other
as we belong to ourselves,
each of us a poem read by strangers
and beloveds in ways only they can read us,
each of us constantly rewriting
our lines, while in the meantime
we are constantly rewritten
by a great and unnamable
is-ness that rhymes us
each to each other.
 
We belong to the truth
that all belongs, even when we
are most lonely, even when
we would rather push away
from the world.
 
In a circle of mountains,
it is easier to practice belonging—
easier to notice this math:
your heart equals my heart,
and all this opening, opening, opening
to what we cannot know,
that equals what a life is for.

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In the Quiet After

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »


 
 
I would never have invited it into my heart,
but it came, a wildfire, burning down
every single thing I thought I knew
about love. There were no wings
that appeared in the ash. Not all
fallen things learn to fly. But
the aftermath was the first time
I was still enough for long enough
to hear a peace that thrums
through everything. I do not pretend
to know how it works, but neither
can I pretend to not know it is here.
Even in the char. And, I suspect,
even in the flame.

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One Lesson from the Fungi

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 16, 2025| 2 Comments »



said the shaggy mane,
this how to write a poem—
spill your ink
all over everything, then
disappear

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So Alive 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2025| 22 Comments »


 
Finn, the larkspur are nearly done blooming now,
the tall stalks are scruffy with seed pods where
the dark blue petals used to be.
Is it strange to give you the garden report?
Today is four years since you chose to leave
this world of bindweed and deep red dahlia,
this world of millipedes and green beans
dangling on their vines. The sky is thick
with smoke from a wildfire not so far away.
It was a relief when it began to rain
while I was picking snapdragons and
sunflowers, zinnias and lavender.
I didn’t mind getting drenched
while I filled five vases with flowers,
four vases for our home and one
your father and I took to your grave.
I felt so alive in the middle of the storm,
arranging the blooms in vases just so
while the water dripped from my hair, my nose.
Felt so alive as I smelled the air and spoke
to you and the flowers and sky.
Today my friend Wini told me one way
to keep life sacred is to ask the holy to come.
Please, I said as I stood in the rows.
Please, come. Is it possible the asking itself
is the bridge from the everyday to the holy?
Because I felt it. There in the rain
with my grief-bent heart. There beside
the calendula, aphids and all. Hair plastered
to my head. Tears on my face. Memory
of you writing I love you in the carrot bed.
Me making bouquets for a difficult day.
Even when it hurts, the holy.

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Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork CinePoem

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 15, 2025| 4 Comments »

Perhaps the greatest risk in love of all? Loving the self. Not the small self—the self of ego—but the life that lives through us—the Self that is still here when all the trappings of who we think we are fall away. “Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork” is the tenth track on RISKING LOVE, a spoken-word album with guitarist Steve Law that explores how we might fall more deeply in love with the world as it is, even when that seems impossible.

RISKING LOVE audio by Steve Law. Video by Holiday Mathis. Please, watch the video (above) and share it. We made this for you! 
To purchase RISKING LOVE, visit here.
To listen free on Spotify: here ; Deezer: here ; Pandora: here ; Apple Music: here ; YouTube Music: here

Video and Audio Releases from RISKING LOVE to Date
Safety Net : The Precious Matter of Love : I Want an Interlude with Mr. Clean ; Into the Questions ; For the One Who Is Gone ; In Case You Don’t Know Already ; The Long Marriage ; The Broken Heart Goes Dancing ; Still Here ; Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork

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